Business Communication Oral Presentation

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You Are the Focus of Your Presentation

From the beginning of the design process, resist the urge to make your slides the primary focal point; they are just an aid. Ideally, audience members will focus their eyes on you for the majority of the presentation. Consider the comments of Judith Humphrey, a prominent executive trainer:

Great leaders understand that they are the best visual. They instinctively know that their message will come through best if the audience looks at them and listens to them—with no distractions. Audiences that divide their attention will only be able to partially commit to you. PowerPoint slides are usually a dumbed-down version of the narrative script you are delivering. Visuals rely on bullet points; you speak in full sentences, with illustrations and stories. Slides are dispassionate; your voice and gestures provide passion and emphasis. So in deflecting the audience’s attention away from you to the bullet points, you’re reducing the quality of your material and its impact on the audience.24

Create a Storyboard with Your PowerPoint Slide Titles

Make sure that your presentations tell a story to your audience. To check whether your slides provide a flowing narrative rather than a disjointed set of ideas, line up your slide titles (see Table 14.3). Ask yourself whether the slide titles move naturally through the narrative of your presentation.25

TABLE 14.3

Setting Up Slide Titles to Help You Make a Smooth, Logical Presentation

Slide #	Title	Story Line
1	Improving Employee Engagement: Transitioning to Continuous Reviews and Recognition	Positive overarching theme in the title slide: higher employee engagement
2	Benefits of Employee Engagement	Attention: shows the benefits of increasing employee engagement
3	Problems with Annual Reviews	Need: shows how the current approach of annual reviews does not improve employee engagement
4	Our Employees’ Views of Annual Reviews	Need: shows current disenchantment with annual reviews at this company
5	Benefits of Continuous Reviews	Solution: shows how continuous review systems overcome the problems of annual reviews and increase employee engagement
6	Our Employees’ Views of Continuous Reviews	Solution: shows how continuous review systems have support from the employees
7	Positive, Helpful, and Candid Feedback	Rationale/Counterpoints: describes the nature of feedback; addresses concerns that a new system won’t promote candid feedback
8	Ease of Use for Managers	Rationale/Counterpoints: describes how the system gets buy-in from managers; addresses concerns that a new system won’t get support from managers
9	Cost-Effectiveness	Rationale/Counterpoints: describes the costs of a system; addresses concerns that a new system costs too much
10	Proposed Implementation	Call to action: uses a timeline to identify implementation